June 2005

AWOL

To those who complained about the lack of action here at Numeric Towers,
there is no excuse, but the reason is that your bending author has been out
planting vegetables. Ironically, while the BBC and the Ministry were cooking up
their Heatwave scares, the BBC's veteran gardening correspondent
was reporting from the Chelsea Flower Show "I have been coming to Chelsea
for 37 years and this is the coldest May I have known". They had to bring
in radiant heaters to bring the flowers on.

Einstein on consensus

It is appropriate that, on the centenary of his annus mirabilis,
Albert Einstein should have the last word on the new wave of consensus science. Regular
number watcher John Brian Baker found this:

In 1933,
Adolf Hitler's Nazi party seized control and with them came the systematic
persecution of Jews and of political opponents. As a Jew and a socialist,
Einstein was a target of the Nazi secret police. Mass meetings were held in
Berlin denouncing Einstein's theories and "Jewish physics". A book One
hundred authors against Einstein was published - he remarked that if he
had been wrong then one would have been enough!

Correspondence received

Re:
grumpy old men – Jane
Barnett – MiddlxUniversity.
Why can’t you be more
positive about other people’s research? You
sound a typical skeptical grumpy old man yourself and as my daughter took months
to do this serious research for her PhD you are only showing yourself up by
being critical. I’m not an
academic, nor want to be, but your attitude just shows you up for what you are
and I’m glad she hasn’t any stupid old men like you at her University.It’s a pity you haven’t anything else to do but pull
other people to bits.I can’t be
bothered to read any more of your ridiculous site and wonder whether anyone else
feels sorry for you.You sad
bastard.

16/06/05

The power of gross statistical fraud

The tobacco-banning movement has finally
reached the stage of the last push in England. It is remarkable that it has
taken so long, considering that it is driven by the combined forces of the
political correctness movement, the zeal of the converts with a fear of their
own cravings, those who get their kicks out of ordering others around and the
socialist love of banning things.

If the age of science ever returns, the
story will provide the classic example of the use of junk science to enforce a
policy; though that is unlikely, as history is written by winners. The
scientific basis of most of the claims comes from two studies, by the CDC and
the EPA. The preliminary results of both were embarrassing: the CDC study showed
that smokers lived longer than non-smokers, while the EPA one showed that
passive smoking was harmless. The CDC solved their problems with a sequence of
statistical fiddles, the most egregious of which involved treating all eighty
and ninety year old smokers as having died prematurely of their habit. The
important one, however, was the EPA so called meta-study. They had spent four
years developing an anti-tobacco policy when someone pointed out that they did
not have any evidence that smokers caused harm to others. Their reaction to this
has been covered frequently in these pages and the associated books, as well as
widely elsewhere. The most astonishing was committing the statistical crime of
changing the level of significance part way through a study, and reducing it to
a level that is a record low, yet still achieving only a ludicrous RR
of 1.19. The product of these studies were the baseless claims the 400,000
Americans die from smoking each year and 3,000 die from passive smoking. The
British zealots reduced these figures pro rata for population and then
characteristically added a bit for luck. Some of the attempts by at evidence the
zealots who have taken over the BMA are quite ludicrous.
The efforts to rewrite history to cover up any challenges to the so-called
evidence are legion (e.g. the vilification of the heroic Judge
Osteen).

The proposed English
smoking policy is classic Old Labour, with an unnecessary proliferation of
ugly notices, criminalisation of an innocent minority, draconian policing with
yet more burdens imposed on local authorities and hence more taxes, plus the
recruitment of snoopers. Above all there is the irrelevance. We noted back in February
2001 how Labour back-benchers packed the house for the hunting ban and then
walked out when serious matters were to be debated. We have national disasters
in such areas as hard drugs and violent crime, yet we are going to dissipate
resources on catching people having a quick drag. People have always taken
pleasure in persecuting minorities, but in the world of PC some minorities are
more persecutable than others.

Truth is stranger than fiction

In the light of the current craze for
lists of the greatest, compiled from viewers’ votes, your bending author once
began a parody in which people voted for greatest philosopher, but abandoned it
as too far fetched. Now the BBC (who else?) has done just
that and more. Not only are we able to vote, but we can have the guidance of
thoughts from the inevitable celebrities, such as tele-bimbos and disc jockeys.
We live in a world in which nothing has any validity unless it has the
democratic approval of those who are stupid enough to pay for a premium
phone-call to register their vote. In the list of top novels, all the titles
were by coincidence ones that had been recently adapted for television or film.
The abysmal cultural tastes of the Prime Minister, as exemplified by his honours
lists, have set the standard for the downward slide of the national culture.
Nothing is acceptable unless it has the approval of the masses, as guided by the
celebrities who are the bastions of the culture. No wonder the eco-theologians
have been so successful in shouting down the remaining few adherents to the
scientific method. Their message is simple and understandable to the
undiscerning majority, unlike the counter arguments that are based on science
and mathematics.No doubt the
promoters of the BBC’s philosophy series had the loftiest motives for
popularising the work of the great philosophers, but treating them like the
entrants to a Miss World competition simply diminishes them. The passion for
ranking things that are not measurable diminishes us all.

Watch out for the chance to vote for the
World’s Greatest Physicist.

And

Talking of celebrities, it was
noticeable how the Global Warmers, while serenely ignoring the criticisms of the
other emeritus professors, fell into a panic when one of them turned out to be a
television personality. A Google of Bellamy
and poppycock produces 1170 hits.

22/06/05

My brane hurts

…where ignorance is bliss,
‘Tis folly to be wise.
Gray, Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College

The Number Watch crapometer is broken
again, with the pointer wrapped several times round the end stop. It is all the
fault of number watcher Mathew Iredale, who submitted this
item.

What is it with these authors of
pseudo-equations? Are they innumerate half-wits or dedicated con-men? Have they
actually heard of concepts such as coefficients or dimensional
homogeneity?

As if that were not enough, we have a
recrudescence of the old stand-by scare, which was last raging six years ago,
while Sorry, wrong
number! was in the writing. It was then being touted by one Al Gore and
his opposite number Old Two Jags. How do people work year in year out as science
reporters without an iota of appreciation of relative magnitudes getting through
to them? Of course, it was the Independent
that made the biggest meal of it.

There a couple of quotes to treasure:

Stephen Reilly, a spokesman for the trust, said it
was "scary" that half of Britons were not aware household power
consumption contributed to climate change.

That includes your bending author.

Dishwashers left "on" at the end of their
cycle consume 70 per cent of the power used when they are running.

Oh yeah? What do they do with it?

Professor David Barron comments:

What staggered me was the assertion that we are contributing to the
problem by leaving kitchen appliances - cookers, dishwashers and washing
machines "on standby", instead of "switching off at the
mains". One can only assume that the civil servants and journalists
involved have no experience of a real kitchen. My cooker consumes power whilst
I'm cooking. Then it's off. Same for the dishwasher. OK I have a very minor
problem with the washing machine. It doesn't have a "power on-off"
button, so - mea culpa - it remains powered up when not washing. (Mains socket
is inaccessibly located behind the fridge freezer.) Whilst in this state it is
drawing power to illuminate a 2mm neon indicating "mains on". Now, as
a lapsed physicist, I know that the power drain of a 2mm neon is so small as to
be un-measurable without sophisticated equipment. Without doing the
calculations, I can say with some confidence that over the twenty-year life of
the machine, the power drain of that neon is less than the power used on one
wash cycle. (Trouble is that these arts-educated people don't understand that
it's motors and heaters that draw real power. And as I've remarked before, every
one of South West Train's new Desiro trains draws at least a megawatt from the
third rail every time it moves. And a Eurostar draws 18 megawatts. That's a lot
of videos on standby.)

Returning to the electronic devices, we are told - shock, horror! - that a video
on standby consumes 85% of the power of a video in operation. So? 85% of a small
amount is an even smaller amount. And the video may well be on standby because
you've set the timer. And even if you haven't, if your video is like mine, it
will forget the time after two or three minutes of no power.
Finally we come to computers. Well, if I'm paying for "always-on"
Broadband, I want an "always-on" computer. (So if I'm "sleepless
in Seattle " I can click the mouse and be there.) But again, the
technology-ignorant Arts people don't understand the sophisticated
power-management features of modern computers. So, my desktop is left on. But
after 15 minutes or so of no activity the screen goes off. A bit later, the hard
disk stops spinning. And a bit later the whole system goes into sleep mode. No
doubt consuming a few milliamps, but nothing to cause you concern when you
contemplate all the other demands on your Southern Electric power feed.

So unworldly, these emeritus professors!

Comment added by Barry
Holland:

I have heard a lot recently on the TV and Radio about the
amount of power being used by Televisions on Standby. The most recent
was on Radio 2 lunchtime on Thursday 23rd June. A professor, whose name
I missed, said " we dont want to confuse things by using kilowatt
hours....." and went on to use CO2 equivalents in double decker buses and
claim that turning the TV off would save me at least 50£ per year.

However this prompted me to look at the manual for my own
television, a five year old CRT JVC AV 28WFT11EK. The standby power
consumption is 0.8 watt. When in use it uses 115 Watts.

25/06/05

Of ritual and sacrifice

Why do they bother, you might rightly
wonder, these people who drum up campaigns like the no standby one? Why do they
go to the trouble of thinking up such terrible porkies about the numbers
involved and then haranguing the populace with them?

The reason is that the global warmers,
like any other religious group, feel the need to propagate the faith and add to
their membership. Most religions develop the process of sacrifice. It is
designed to create commitment. Once people have given up something for the sake
of a belief they are less likely to renege. The punter who has bought a duff
device to save fuel drives more conservatively and hence makes it a self
fulfilling prophecy, rather than admit to himself that he has been sold a pup.
It is a rule that grifters learn at their mothers' knees - get the mark
comitted.

Likewise, all religions develop ritual.
It is a way of locking people into the faith and providing a constant reminder
of its doctrines. The householder who goes religiously around the house
switching off things at the mains is reinforcing his beliefs. The fact that he
has to put up with the inconvenience of the video recorder losing its memory
only serves to underline his commitment. It is a sacrifice and apostasy would
mean that it has been made for nothing.

Energy is at the heart of the Green’s
campaign to take humanity back to the New Stone Age. They vehemently oppose
every attempt to exploit new energy sources (except the useless, but iconic,
intermittent ones). For many of them it is an alternate route to the promised
land of socialism, the revolution having failed. Danny the Red (Cohn-Bendit) is
now Danny the Green, and leader of that faction in the European Parliament. Most
people, however, cannot see the connection. Oddly enough, red-green is the most
common form of colour blindness.

People use the principle of sacrifice to
exploit others. Television evangelists wax rich with donations from the gullible
public, who actually feel good about it.

Donations to Number Watch may be
made at the index page.

26/06/05

Bluff called

The progress of the Hockey Stick has
been an interesting spectator sport. Mann et al not only arrogantly
dismissed the results of centuries of human knowledge (history, art, entomology,
archaeology etc.) but they made strenuous efforts to ensure that no critiques of
their methods were published. Your bending author has never received an answer
to the simple question of how a technique of linear algebra (principal component
analysis) can be applied to systems (e.g. plant growth) that are demonstrably
non-linear. The alacrity with which the IPCC seized upon the claims and changed
their charts brings back memories of a nervous lecturer of half a century ago,
who immediately rubbed everything off the blackboard as soon as a hand was
raised in query.

Now we learn (via Climate
Audit) that the House of Representatives has called for the details of
methodology, which have been so coyly hidden, to be revealed.

Chapter
3 A gallery of fallacies

It is a
characteristic of people taking weak logical positions that they attack the
person presenting an argument rather than argument itself. Typically SIFswill
dismiss all critics of their position as being in the pay of the tobacco/chemical/alcoholor
fuel industries.

So predictable – 2

In the opening paragraph of this
month’s tirade mention was made of the unusually cold May in Britain. One of
the results of this is that, when normal weather returns in June, all the
grasses flower at once and we hay fever sufferers get a bit of the annual
discomfort. Meanwhile, in preparation for G8, the media have been bombarding us
with global warming propaganda. So here is how the annual Times
hay fever page opens.

June 27, 2005

Hay fever sufferers endure worst June on record
By Valerie Elliott, Countryside Editor

THIS summer is
already the worst on record for hay fever sufferers — and there
will be no respite in the weeks ahead, scientists say.

Higher levels of
grass pollen caused by warmer, drier days as a result of climate
change mean that more people are sufferring from sneezing, red and
itchy eyes and wheezing.

……

Can it really be true that the average Times
reader has a memory duration of less than a month?

Roll up for the cock-up of the century

Simon Jenkins can be a two edged sword
as far as the interests of number watchers are concerned, but every now and then
he homes in like a guided missile on some modern absurdity. This he did in his Sunday
Times article Masters
of the universe give us a billion-pound computer fiasco. A section of Sorry,
wrong number! was on Great computer
disasters, but they will pale into insignificance when New Labour’s latest
essay into Orwellian authority hits the fan. This is the Identity Cards Bill.

The Sorry! piece five years
ago included this sentence: The
next one boiling up nicely was the NHS computer network.
Here is Jenkins’ update on it:

The NHS computer was supposed to list everyone in
the country with their various ailments so any doctor or hospital could treat
them “on screen”. Nobody ever asked for this machine, which was supposed to
start in 2004. It was a pure top-down sales pitch. The medical establishment
pleaded naively that the cost not be met from other health spending. The price
soared within a year to £2.3 billion and is now £6.2 billion, with no known
delivery date. Every industry expert is screaming at Patricia Hewitt, the health
secretary, to cancel it. She has not the guts. It was a “McKinsey project”
and her boss dare not be seen wasting billions on his friends, money that might
have gone on patient care.

Of course, he gives other
examples, but the sum truth is that the Government never gets a computer project
right. They are routinely gulled out of great wodges of the
taxpayers’ money by a band of grifters calling themselves consultants, system
designers, computer manufacturers etc.

The cost of this latest
fiasco-to-be is actually going up before they have even started it. The
successful organism learns from experience, but the new breed of career
politicians do not have to face up to the consequences of their actions. Under
the new Blair constitution even resignations are only temporary holidays,
subsidised by the taxpayer, and total failure is rewarded by elevation to the
new House of Cronies.

At least the politicians
have contrived
a way of reducing criticism of their numbers.

28/06/05

Number of the month - eight

Number Watch tries to maintain a policy of moderate language, but
what do you do when you have a complete nutter in high office, who every
summer comes out with a policy dafter than the one before. Richard
Brunstrom was justly dubbed by the Daily Mail The Worst Copper in Britain
after his eruption in August 2003 (see Heroes
of our Time, no 2). He surfaced again in June 2004
(see footnotes to that month). This summer's outing produced the headline Traffic
officers must make eight arrests a month in the Daily Mail of June 26.
The Mail has amassed about two dozen stories on this particular
hero. When he is not oppressing motorists he is advocating
that all drugs should be legalised (makes you wonder what he is on).

His latest wheeze is to turn his police officers into bounty hunters by
awarding them "points for pulls". Regardless of the actual
occurrence of offences, the Burglar's Friend will subject his officers to
investigation if they fail to reach prescribed targets. As the corollary to
Brignell's Law of League Tables tells us
"what you measure is what you get". Even the honest policemen, who
would not dream of fitting up an innocent person, will be subjected to
pressures. Not only is it known that subconscious motivation can steer
measurement errors in the "right" direction, the instruments used
have just the right sort of failure
modes to enable this to happen. The man is completely lacking in moral
integrity, he is the ultimate Single Issue Fanatic and he ought to be stopped.
He will not be, because he is bringing in stealth taxes to maintain Gordon's
bureaucratic army.

Whatever happened to British justice?

29/06/05

PS

We trust that you did not miss the 58 mph wall in the last link. Now that's
what you really call modern measurement!